Runners, fencers set for NCAA championships

Photos/Sportspix

Kelsey Whitaker

Adam Mandel

By Adam LevinMarch 12, 2014

Brandeis student-athletes will be competing at the upcoming NCAA championships in track and field and in fencing.

Seniors Amelia Lundkvist and Victoria Sanford and sophomore Kelsey Whitaker all qualified to run in the mile race at the NCAA Division III championships at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, March 14-15. It marks the first time that three Judges will compete in the same event at the national championships.

Whitaker enters the meet ranked fifth in Division III. Lundkvist is seeded ninth, despite missing much of the indoor track season with an injury, and Sanford is seeded 17th.

The top Division I, II and III fencers will face off in the NCAA championships at the Ohio State University in Columbus on March 20-23. Brandeis will be represented by junior Adam Mandel in men’s sabre, sophomore Caroline Mattos in women’s foil, and junior Noah Berman in men’s foil.

Mandel, who finished 12th at last year’s national championships, will try to become Brandeis’s first multiple All-American in fencing since Olympic silver-medalist Tim Morehouse ’00. Mattos finished 23rd at the championships in 2013 and is the first Brandeis woman to make a return trip to the NCAA championships since Caitlin Kozel ’08 in 2007 and 2008. Berman is making his first trip to the competition.

More information on the competitions and how to follow the Judges online is available on the Brandeis Athletics site.